Course information is often outdated

[DTV96Calibre]

By the time course registration comes around, often classes will have changed scheduled times, classes will have popped into existence, or classes will have been removed. These changes aren't seen with no8am. Assuming no8am gets course data once and then provides it until the next semester comes around, this could be fixed by updating the data daily.

[nowyasimi]

Thanks for the feedback, Daniel. No8am has a Redis cache layer to improve the server's response time. Ordinarily, data is cached for two days. However, although the code in the master branch does not reflect this, data is cached for only 30 seconds during course registration periods such as right now. I see two pull requests that can come out of this:

• It would be great to display the age of the course data somewhere in the interface. This can be done by using the cache_time flag that comes with course data API calls. For example, the cache age could appear in the corner of a course button like this:

• If we decide that data from up to 30 seconds ago is not recent enough, we can disable the cache layer entirely during course registration periods. This can be done with a simple date check in cache.py that sets the DISABLE_CACHE flag appropriately. Even if we do not decide to disable the cache, it would be nice to add date checking anyway so that the DEFAULT_CACHE_TIME flag does not have to updated manually from 2 days to 30 seconds during course registration periods.

If anyone decides to tackle either of these, please open a new issue so we can discuss how to implement these features.